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Sunday, 18 November 2012

By Alan
Caruba

In ancient times the expression was
“All roads lead to Rome.” An impressive network of roads had been built to
maintain the Roman Empire, but it eventually broke apart and failed. These days
all roads lead to Tehran, the capital of Iran, the terror capitol of the world,
and to its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The attacks on Israel were ordered by
Khamenei and the support for Syria’s dictator Bashar Assad come from Khamenei.
Perhaps inspired by the success of the al Qaeda attack on a U.S. consulate in
Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11, Hamas—a proxy for Iran in
Gaza—increased its rocket attacks on Israel.

Among the rockets raining down on
Israel is a Fajr-5 that is made in Iran.

It is important to keep in mind that
these rocket attacks have been made for a decade. However, following the
reelection of President Obama, they increased and it is my view that the
Iranians have taken his measure of the four years of his first term and
concluded that he would do little to support Israel and that they could increase
their efforts to create nuclear weapons with which to destroy Israel and
threaten the Middle East and the world.

DEBKA File, an Israeli news agency
reported on November 17th
that President Obama had called Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu to reiterate
“his support for Israel’s right to defend itself.” In addition, he called
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi to urge him “to persuade Hamas to accept
Israel’s terms for a ceasefire.”

The reality is that there has been no
ceasefire from Hamas since it seized control of Gaza from Fatah, as the
Palestinian Liberation Organization is also known. The PLO governs the West
Bank, an area Israel secured as the result of an earlier war.

Israel is under fire as the direct
result of Obama’s actions and statements during his first term. This is what
happens when sixty years of support and cooperation are abandoned in an effort
to curry acceptance by Middle Eastern regimes and people.

It is useful to consider the record
of wars waged against Israel since it declared its sovereignty in 1948. The
announcement was followed immediately by the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that ended in
July 1949. Military actions were carried out against Israel throughout the 1950s
and 60s from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. There was conflict when Israel joined
Britain and France after Egypt announced its intention to occupy the Sinai
Peninsula and take over the Suez Canal. The Six-Day War in June 1967 was
triggered by Egypt and joined by Jordan and Syria. Israel won a decisive
victory, expanding its territory to include the West Bank, the Golan Heights,
and Gaza.

Another war of attrition followed
from 1967 to 1970. In October 1973 Israel was attacked on its holiest day, Yom
Kippur, by Egypt and Syria. From 1971 to 1982 led to an invasion of Lebanon in
1978. In 1982, another war was fought with Lebanon which had become a staging
area for the Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. More conflict continued from 1987 to
2000. From 1987 through to 2005, a Palestinian uprising known as the Intifada
continued. And in 2006 another war with Lebanon was triggered by the abduction
of two Israeli reserve soldiers by Hezbollah.

The first Gaza war, December 2008 to
January 2009, was waged against Hamas, an Iranian proxy, and now, as the result
of months of rocket attacks on Israel, it has been renewed.

The Iranians are within months of
achieving their long time goal of creating a nuclear arsenal. On October 19
DEBKA File reported that its intelligence sources had learned that Iran “had
finished installing in Fordo the last set of advanced centrifuges for enriching
uranium to 20 percent purity” which will give the ability to enhanced these
stocks to the 90 percent bomb-making level.

“American experts,” said DEBKA File,
“now estimate that this jump would take no more than two to three weeks from the
moment a go-ahead order came down from Khamenei.”

Writing in the November 16 Wall
Street Journal, Saul Singer said “Even the debate over sanctions and military
action against Iran’s nuclear program largely misses the point. The solution is
for Iran’s regime to fall, and the key to that isn’t sanctions or even military
action. It is for Western governments to star saying to Iran’s leaders what they
told Egypt’s Hosni Mubarack, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, ad Syria’s Bashar Assad:
You must go.”

Singer said that “There is a reason
why Iran is desperately trying—with money, personnel and weapons—to keep Assad’s
brutal regime afloat in Syria. What the mullahs fear more is the Arab Spring
spreading to Iran.”

Even former Secretary of State, Henry
Kissinger, writing in a recent issue of the Washington Post, said, “The most
urgent decision facing the president is how to stop Iran from pursuing a
military nuclear program.”

World War II began because the
nations of Europe sought appeasement with the Nazi regime. They delayed
preemptive action until it was too late. The U.S. and the nations of the world
have followed the same path with Iran. The Obama “apology tour” to the Middle
East has been a total failure and has brought the world to the brink of a war
there that could spread to wherever there are nations with large Muslim
populations. And Europe has large Muslim
populations.

All this is happening as a U.S.
government in gridlock faces a “fiscal cliff” that would require huge cuts to
our defense budget at the worst possible time. A profligate Obama regime has
increased the national debt to $16 trillion and large numbers of Americans are
unemployed. This mirrors the 1930s in which a recession from which the nation
could have recovered was so badly botched that it became the Great
Depression.

The only option the U.S. and the West
has is to join with Israel to destroy or significantly disable Iran’s nuclear
program and attack its military capabilities. The Gaza attacks on Israel are
part of the Iranian effort to test and “soften up” its defenses, to engage the
Israeli Defense Force in a ground war that will deplete its armed forces.

Americans and Israelis embrace life,
but our enemies embrace death. They are taught from birth that dying in a holy
war—a jihad—opens the gates to paradise.

We are on the brink of a Third World
War intended to bring about a new Islamic caliphate, the control of the world by
Islam.